So much for those precious minutes of my life ...

Best of Tests is another member of the "exercise your brain with video games" club. It is, according to the game box, designed to test your logic, observation, memory, speed of perception and analysis. The box also claims that the little cartridge contained within will actually allow you to improve these areas of your intelligence.

Here is my short review: "Bleh!"

I cannot get back those fleeting moments of my life that I spent playing Best of Tests DS, but if you want to save your own time, move along and skip this game. If you are determined to give the game a more thorough analysis before committing your gaming dollar, go ahead and keep reading. I'll even put a little piece of unrelated trivia at the end of this review to reward you for your perseverance.

There's not really a save game to speak of in Best of Tests. Your tests results are tracked by the game as you go along. If you have more than one person in your home that wants to share the game and track their individual results, too bad. The only way to have different saves is to buy multiple copies.

Other than the actual questions, the graphics for the game consist of a floating professor head. He has a busy white mustache and hair, is wearing a daredevil-style helmet with three purple light bulbs attached to little stalks, and has little disembodied white gloves hands. He'll give you a thumbs-up when you answer right and look sad when you get it wrong. Enjoy this animation — because it's all the animation you're going to get. There is kind of an odd techno-sounding music track for audio. I turned off the volume on my DS almost immediately to avoid it, but you can actually toggle the music off in the small options menu.

The game, such as it is, is divided into intelligence tests, memory tests, a training area for each of the preceding options and a results screen. The options menu allows you to toggle the language between English, Spanish and French. You can turn the music off or on. Finally, you can view the game credits. The names all appear to be European. This wouldn't surprise me since all questions in the game involving currency are using the Euro. You'll also find the spelling of words to be according to European conventions.

Both intelligence and memory tests are organized in the same manner. You have three levels of difficulty (and I use the word "difficult" loosely): easy, normal and difficult. Each level of difficulty is divided into a short, medium and long test. The short tests have 10 questions. The medium tests have 20 questions. I bet you can already guess that the long tests have 30 questions. See, you can already identify patterns — something the intelligence tests will quiz you on repeatedly. Here's the kicker for the way the tests are organized: You have to unlock each test length at each level. You will have to start at easy and short and work your way through to difficult and long. I have heard that by completing all levels of the standard game, you can unlock some sort of timed feature. I have no reason to disbelieve this information, and I have absolutely no intention of finding out for myself.

The questions are pulled from different areas that you might see on an IQ test or from old standardized tests you may have taken in school at some point. You'll be tested on vocabulary, number and letter sequences (finding the pattern and extending it), math word problems, algebraic problems, spacial reasoning (given a complex shape, how many sides does it have), and probably some other things that I'm missing. For example, you're given a pattern of "L M N O." What comes next? Did you guess "P"? You might be given a grid of shapes. You have to figure out the pattern and find the missing shape. There are some puzzles that show you a shape and then have you find the matching shape that has been rotated or rotated and flipped. You'll find yet more pattern matching using cards and dominoes. There are questions that ask you to find words that have similar or opposite meanings. Sometimes you unscramble a word. Sometimes you pick which word doesn't belong in of a group of words.

The memory games are really all testing your visual memory. You might be shown a grid of objects and then are asked to indicate where on the grid an object was located. Sometimes you get a grid with some boxes filled in and you have to recreate the pattern. There are a few variations, but if you have a reasonably good visual memory, you'll do just fine.

The training section just gives you a super short test of the areas used in the standard test. These areas are divided into vocabulary, numbers and letters, figures and drawings, cards and dominos, mathematics, and memory.

Here's one of my main quibbles with the game: It's not that it's not particularly involved or hard or visually engaging, it's that it claims to allow you to improve your skills in the various test areas. How? All you are given for feedback is whether you're right or wrong. It doesn't explain how anything works. It doesn't tell you what the right answer is. There is no effort whatsoever to train you on any of the skills in which you're being tested. There is nothing here to back up the claim that it allows you to improve any of these areas of your intelligence.

The game does generate a sort of running intelligence score — which I find particularly meaningless. The numbers aren't objective and are not given in comparison to anything else. I suppose if someone else were playing the same game, you could compare your score with them, but that's about it. They call your score an intelligence score — but please do not confuse it with an actual intelligence quotient (IQ) score.

Please, dear reader, hold tight to your precious ducats. There are other games out there that will genuinely test your intelligence, engage your mind and challenge your skills. Seek them out.

And now, for the promised trivia reward.

In the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, did you know that K-Y jelly was the product slathered onto the prosthetic skin of the Orcs so they'd look all sweaty and nasty? Yeah, me neither.

I leave you with this final thought:

It is not a question how much a man knows, but what use he can make of what he knows.

— Josiah Gilbert Holland